This history of physics from Uruguay encourages two types of reflections, connected but not necessarily the same. The first one allows us to think about what we can and should understand under the label of Physics, within the set of knowledge, practices and possibilities that were established in this country and the region. The second reflection has to do with that more properly philosophical question, the one that underlies every deep analysis that is provoked from the philosophy of science: what is or should we understand by science? If we argue that both dimensions are intimately connected it is because we are guided by the thought that was reflected in the introduction, reduced in Goethe’s phrase: “the history of science is science itself”.